


The Comfort of Strangers

by maplemood



Category: Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Female Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-08 10:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: In the dark, in the boat on the sea which flowed for miles uncounted and to worlds without number, Penthe remembered the chaos of the day when the Tombs collapsed in on themselves.





	The Comfort of Strangers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> When you listed the first three Earthsea books in your fandom stocking I couldn't resist--I hope you enjoy this!

“You’ll both need use-names,” said Sparrowhawk when they were a day’s sail yet from Havnor; it was good weather for sailing, brisk and very clear, and as the wind bellied out _Lookfar’s_ patched red sail the sea split into a fine, salty mist before its prow. “It’s not the custom here to wear one’s true name as openly as you do in Atuan.”

At this Tenar, who all morning and most of the past night had sat upright in the stern, her face closed, said, “I know. You told me already.”

“I didn’t tell Penthe,” he said, patient as ever. Sparrowhawk looked to the girl sitting beside Tenar—broader and pinker, her fair hair whipped loose and her round cheeks flushed red by the sharp sea wind. Tenar turned to her as well, her face falling as if in the lonely stretch between night and morning she’d forgotten Penthe completely, and then she reached down and laced the other girl’s fingers through her own, squeezing them tightly.

“You didn’t,” she said at last. Then, rather severely, “Well? What will it be?”

Penthe, hardly grown used to thinking of Tenar as Tenar when for so many years the girl who clasped her hand had been Arha, the Eaten One born ever nameless, could only shrug helplessly. “How should I know?” The sea sucked and sighed all about them; it was vast, far vaster than she remembered or than perhaps it had seemed from her tiny village sheltered by the dunes. Indeed, its vastness terrified Penthe, though she could no more admit this to Sparrowhawk and Tenar than she could fully admit it to herself….For hadn’t she always ached to leave the Place? To travel the world and bear witness to great deeds as they happened? She licked her lips. “What would be a good use-name, Sparrowhawk?” Penthe asked, tasting salt. “You’ll have to tell me—I don’t know.”

The mage had a kind face, but a harsh one. At least it seemed harsh to Penthe, wind-battered, brown, raked across by whitish scars and often stiller than stone. Even so, the smile he gave her was an open one. It held a strange sweetness in it. “Well, that depends on the island,” he answered, “and there are many islands. But on most of them they pick words in their own dialect, names for plants or animals or the like. A meaning, maybe a sound, that suits the person, and it can change as they grow older.”

Penthe remembered the handful of words he’d already taught them in his Gontish dialect, queer and rough-sounding to her ears. She turned back to Tenar. “Have you picked?”

Tenar’s fingers tightened through hers again. Penthe thought, with a shot of sympathy, _They took your name for so long, I understand._ And though she didn’t quite, and suspected she never would completely understand the darkness and emptiness in which Tenar-who-had-been-Arha had lived almost her whole life, sympathy still throbbed in her, ceaseless and longing. _I understand. Oh, Tenar, I understand—_

“Goha.” Tenar finally disentangled her fingers from Penthe’s and tucked a strand of lank black hair behind her ear. “It’s a little white spider that lives in caves, a web-spinner. It has no eyes. It lives in darkness.”

Penthe thought she remembered Sparrowhawk teaching them the word some time back in the mountains, inspired by their stories of all the endless days spent weaving in the Big House. Now she thought he rather regretted it. His face was drawn, and he turned it away.

“Oh, well, when you put your mind to it you were one of the best weavers.” Penthe patted Tenar’s arm, saying to Sparrowhawk, “I never could. I’d rather spend whole days in the kitchens, cooking. Eating!”

He turned back to them, though his face was still drawn. The sun had disappeared behind a haze of gray cloud. The wind coming off the sea blew sharper and bitterer.

Penthe said, more timidly, “We’ve a day left, yes? Can I think about it?”

“Of course.”

After a while, the clouds cleared. The sun shone out again, glittering white in every dip and ripple of the waves. The rest of the day passed well enough, for they ate cold fish caught fresh from the ocean with dry, sour bread and drank stale but cold rainwater from the ship’s barrel. It tasted of wood and pitch, and still a bit of the sky it had fallen from. It was very good. Penthe, who’d never in all her years at the Place forgotten how to swim—sometimes sneaking down to the river to practice—finally coaxed Tenar to trail both hands in the glittering green water, then to plunge her head in. They blew bubbles at the tiny silver fish darting around them, then slung their heads back up, dripping and laughing.

“Careful, or you’ll tip the boat,” Sparrowhawk said, but their laughter had coaxed another strange, sweet smile out of him.

 _I’m free,_ Penthe thought more than once that day. It was the first time the idea had borne real weight in her mind, for she wasn’t like Tenar. She’d never held much devotion for the Nameless Ones, or the God-King either. She had not believed in them, in fact, though she’d believed in their hold on others. She’d never felt possessed by them. And yet she had never felt free before. Freedom. It was as vast as the sea, and as terrifying. _You and I, Tenar, we’re free._

At the end of the day, with the lights of a far-off coast pinpricks in the distance, and the larger, bulkier shapes of other boats shadows in the closer distance, Penthe sat awake as Tenar had the night before. When they’d slept, they’d slept curled up together, first in the mountains of Atuan and now in the stern of the _Lookfar;_ Sparrowhawk slept in the prow. Tonight, Tenar slept with her head in Penthe’s lap, thin hands balled tightly, crossed over her thinner chest. She was very small, especially compared to Penthe. Penthe supposed she always had been. It didn’t seem that way.

In the dark, in the boat on the sea which flowed for miles uncounted and to worlds without number, Penthe remembered the chaos of the day when the Tombs collapsed in on themselves. The ground shuddering, the entire Place rocking to its foundations, the Temple of the God-King glittering, gold-roofed amid clouds of dust. She didn’t remember escaping from the temple, only clambering over the Wall, wild with panic, drawn despite all reason to the crumbling destruction of the Tombs. There she’d found her, Arha, the Eaten One. “Oh, Penthe, go, we must go—” They had went. It had only been some time later that Penthe had noticed the man stumbling beside them, a dark-skinned man who looked spent to his limit and dangerous all the same. Still, she hadn’t paid him much attention, those first few days. All her attention was spent on Arha, who was called Tenar now, and who for the first time in all her life looked a girl around Penthe’s age, ragged, lost, painfully determined and painfully small.

Sparrowhawk’s voice brought her back to the boat and the dark. “You’re awake,” he said softly. It was hours since sunset, bright enough with the stars.

She made an agreeable, agreeing noise, not noticing the catch in it.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh!” said Penthe. She put a hand to her face and realized it was wet. “Oh, nothing,” she said, drying her fingers on her rough black cloak. She ran them through Tenar’s hair, and the girl slept on, exhausted, trusting. _We are free,_ Penthe realized yet again. The weight of it all at once grew terrible.

Sparrowhawk waited, silent in the prow. Penthe eyed his dark bulk. He seemed prepared to wait forever.

She said, “Tenar knows your true name, doesn’t she?”

“She does.”

“You gave it to her in the Undertomb?”

“Yes.”

Penthe was silent a long moment, her fingers still combing through Tenar’s hair. “I don’t understand anything,” she whispered. “Your names or your ways or your people. I didn’t rescue you. You didn’t have to bring me.”

“I did not,” said Sparrowhawk. “She did. She loves you very dearly."

The bald truth of those words, as heavy and as terrifying as the realization of freedom, hung between them in the dark a while, until Penthe took a deep breath. “Will you give me your true name one day?” She felt tiny and stupid as soon as the words left her mouth. After all, there was no reason she should know, nothing great or special she had given him. But she had traveled with this strange, accursed sorcerer, as she had traveled with Tenar, and the grouping of the three of them shone brightly in her mind, somehow sacred. Perhaps, if the loving and and the freedom could be spread out, webbed between them all...well, perhaps then it wouldn’t hurt so much, or the hurting itself would be easier to bear.

She sensed, even in the dark, that Sparrowhawk’s face had gone still, craggy and harsh. She held her shoulders straight and set her own face. _I would have been a priestess of the God-King. I would not have trembled._

Wind flapped in the sail. He said, “My name is Ged, Penthe.”

“Hmm,” she said, after a long pause. “Not much of a sound, is it?”

The tension broken, he laughed. She laughed, too, quietly until her belly shook and Tenar shifted, murmuring something unintelligible. Smothering a giggle, Penthe whispered, “Not much of a sound, but a good one, yes?” She did not know that she understood this name-magic, or that she fully believed it, and it did not make the hurt or the heaviness any easier to bear. Still. There was a stillness in the sharing, a peace, and a deep, unbroken trust. “Ged,” she said, “what did you call the fruits you bought us in that little port? The fuzzy golden ones?”

He repeated the name for her, waiting, ever-patient, as she then repeated it back to him, over and over until she had gotten it by heart. “Peach.” It was a good sound, full and soft, bright and sweet. “Do you think that would make a good use-name?”

“Very good,” he said. His voice was gentle. “It suits you.”

“Peach and Goha.” She liked the sound of the two together as much, if not more. Looking down at Tenar’s dark head, she sighed. “What will they do with us in your great city?” At the Place even Awabath had seemed immeasurably distant, Havnor the edge of a world she did not know and did not expect to know.

“Neither of you will come to any harm, Penthe. I promise you that.”

“Can you?” she asked, without malice. She said, so softly she was not at first sure that he had heard, “She won’t come to anymore harm, not while I’m with her. I promise you that.”

“And that I don’t doubt,” Ged said. He yawned; there was a tinge of morning creeping into the eastern edge of the sky, and Tenar had begun to stir in earnest, her head still pillowed in Penthe’s lap. “Now go to sleep, little one. It’s been a long journey, and we’re almost at the end of it.”

So they sailed towards Havnor on a dawn wind.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fic that grew out of my need to see Penthe escape the Tombs and get to know Tenar instead of Arha. I was also curious about use-names; the book _Tehanu_ implies that "Goha" is the name Tenar's husband picked for her, but for this fic at least I wanted to go with something a bit different.


End file.
